The small, everyday stories of women in our society, the caregivers, mothers, and providers, are often left untold. As a way of honouring these women and the hardships they endure, Zizipho Poswa’s debut solo exhibition in the United States, iiNtsika zeSizwe (Pillars of the Nation), seeks to highlight and honour these women.
Zizipho Poswa is a South African artist, born in the Eastern Cape, who focuses on African womanhood. She studied textile design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Her practice centres on ceramics and sculptures, sharing the untold stories of women and their contribution to society. She is inspired by the daily Xhosa rituals she grew up witnessing and practising as a young girl.
Opened on Monday, 15 May, the exhibition is being showcased at Galerie56 in New York, presented with Southern Guild. The exhibition features a selection of bronze sculptures demonstrating the act of ‘umthwalo’. Translating to ‘load’ in isiXhosa, ‘umthwalo’ refers to the practice of women transporting heavy items atop their heads. These items can be buckets of water, stacks of fruit, or firewood.
For this collection, Poswa depicts these items precariously balanced on top of ambiguous, shapeless forms. Each piece is inspired, and named after, different women from Holela village in the rural Eastern Cape, where the artist grew up. The pieces each represent a different woman in the village, with each carrying a load significant to that person or the culture in the region. She honours these women’s resilience and strength by sharing their stories. Each piece is accompanied by a short description of the woman the sculpture is named after.
The sculptures are accompanied by a photographic series as well as a short film documenting ‘umthwalo’ and sharing the stories behind the work. The series of photographs capture the joy and resilience of these women caring for their communities. These artworks represent both the physical and metaphorical ‘load’ women in these communities carry. With many of the men in the family working in the cities, the women are left with caring for and supporting their families. Womanswork is often unpaid and not recognised as important work in society.
These women, Poswa notes, are the pillars of our nation. Their work is so central to maintaining communities, yet is rarely recognised. “To me, the practice of ‘umthwalo’ signifies the balancing act African women play in both traditional and modern society, and their resilience and generosity, which so often go unspoken,” explains Poswa in the exhibition’s press release. “It is an immense honour for me to convey the power and capacity of the women in my community to an international audience.”
These totems of remembrance and recognition, are made in bronze – a material historically reserved for colonial figures. Using bronze for her sculptures, the pieces carry a sense of permanence, almost as a way of solidifying these women’s place in history and paying homage to their hard work. iiNtsika zeSizwe is Poswa’s first exhibition in the US, as well as her first collection made entirely out of bronze. Poswa’s work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Loewe Foundation as well as solo exhibitions at the Southern Guild Gallery in Cape Town. She currently lives and works in Cape Town at her studio, Imiso Ceramics.
